


Eraser

by justlikeyouimagined



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Murder, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23587450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlikeyouimagined/pseuds/justlikeyouimagined
Summary: Need youDream youFind youTaste youFuck youUse youScar youBreak youLose meHate meSmash meErase meKill me- Eraser by Nine Inch Nails
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	Eraser

**Author's Note:**

> Beginning with Will's incarceration and going post-fall, these are snippets of Hannibal and Will through the phases of their relationship. 
> 
> Note the lyrics above in the summary, especially the last one. Implied major character death.

**Need you**

Whereas visitors were strictly controlled in the rest of the hospital, they were plainly forbidden where Will lay in the infirmary. He wouldn’t let that stop him.

He parted the crisp curtains around the hospital bed then stopped abruptly. The fevered scent of Will, locked into the small space by the fine screens, accosted his nose. His pupils bulged and constricted at the tidal of sense and he flared his nostrils to breathe it in. The fine hairs at the back of his neck stood on edge and his skin sizzled. 

Will lay supine before him, breathing labored, skin coated in a slippery sheen of sweat. Behind Will’s lids his eyes danced with the frenzy of a fever dream, and his face contorted with the agony that swelled his lobes. 

Hannibal padded silently forward to the edge of the bed. With a gloved hand, he reached out and touched his fiery skin, sliding away a matted curl. Though Will did not move, beside him the beeping of the cardiac monitor skidded and skipped its otherwise regular beating. Behind his mask, Hannibal smiled. 

**Dream you**

The curve of their bodies could not be more distinct: hers petite and always sedated, whereas he imagined Will would feel much more like home. Still, his imagination was formidable, and he could recreate the sturdy, affected quaking of a man beneath him as he caged Bedelia and lay kisses on her skin.

**Find you**

It was the purely physical reaction of seeing him again that he’d been unprepared for. He’d held himself in the doorway of the room, expecting the sight of him to cause his muscles to spasm and shiver against his volition. What he felt instead was a crashing wave of gurgling calm. When he sat by his side, his fingers didn’t shake inside his pockets. His smile spread genuinely out before the budding spring. 

It wasn’t certainty that steadied him, for the absence of a flight or fight response was truly more disquieting than any tremor. He pondered it in silence as they walked, side by side, across the piazza. His hand gripped the knife tightly as he let it slip from his pocket. 

Looking back, he would never be certain that he would have gone through with it. The decision had lay on one side of a mental coin, left metaphysically spinning on its edge when his shoulder had exploded in bright, decimating pain. No matter how many times she proved her loyalty to Hannibal - and by extension now to him - he could never forgive Chiyoh for making that decision for him. 

**Taste you**

The crush of the ocean beneath him did little to drown out the rushing of his own blood as it surged behind his ears. Later, he’d admit he thought his lung had been pierced, had collapsed and clung stickily to itself for how hard it was to draw a fulfilling breath in Will’s embrace.

Will rested his cheek upon his chest and he’d pressed his face down, smothering it in Will’s wet curls. In the absence of air, he’d leaned in, allowing Will to wrap his arm around his neck and hang heavy on him as his buoy. Their chests pounded together, finding a shared rhythm that neither had carried alone. 

They parted only inches, letting the sun that threatened on the seam of the horizon to burst forth between them. When Will leaned in again, it was to black out the day and mix their blood upon his lips. 

**Fuck you**

“Want you to know me.” He had said it frantically, pulling ungently at the collar of Hannibal’s button down. The sound of the wind rattled the single pane windows of the unassuming country home where they’d gone to ground. Outside, the trees scratched at the glass and frightened the dogs, but Hannibal was unflappable. He pressed his warm hands firmly against Will’s own, halting him.

“I see you,” he answered, which made Will’s brows furrow and his head shake. That wasn’t the same. He leaned forward and pressed his lips over Hannibal’s greedily, sucking the little air between them into his lungs. Hannibal staggered back at the force, then met him tongue and tooth. 

“Fuck me,” Will said plainly then, pulling his hands away and moving them to work the worn leather of his buckle through the loop. “Know me,” he breathed, and slipped off his grease-stained t-shirt, pressing his chest into the other man. 

Hannibal sucked in the scent of him, a simmering fevered burn that wasn’t caused by inflammation but another sort of consumption that had taken hold in them both. A gaping, unrepenting gnaw that threatened to engulf them, if they let it. Will looked straight at Hannibal; his palm cupped the buttery skin of his cheek. 

That’s when they let it. 

**Use you**

Hannibal put gentle pressure on the peach in his hand to check for it’s ripeness, but his mind was elsewhere. It was the same man again, from the fish stalls and before that on his near-deserted early morning walk into town. He’d kept his distance, but Hannibal was no fool. 

He set the fruit down, smiled up at the vendor and graciously paid for the remainder of his produce. What followed was a weaving, careful pursuit through the dizzying alleys and side streets of the town. The sun was still low in the sky; Hannibal led the man through paths that were cast in cool, damp shadow. As he meandered, the man grew bolder, and the distance between them narrowed with each passing turn. 

Finally: a dead end. Hannibal set his bags aside and stood squarely facing the entrance of the aborted alley. In moments, the man swung into view, pausing fractionally to stare at Hannibal’s most characteristic features. Inventorying. Confirmation. The knife slipped out of his back pocket, its blade bright in the dim light. Hannibal cracked his wrist as he loosened himself up, ready for the confrontation. The two men stepped towards each other.

He didn’t let his gaze stray away from the man with the knife when he caught sight of the figure slip around the corner, but it was a near thing. Will wrapped his hand around the man’s neck and _pulled_ the blade through his skin, letting forth a cascade of pulsing heat in an arc through the space just before Hannibal. His death mask was one of shock: a prowling creature unaware of the big cat skulking just behind. 

Will beamed, an edge of lunacy pulling at the corners of his mouth. His body heaved with the heady burst of adrenaline and he bounced in place, as if waiting for another opponent. His eyes glinted with mischief. 

**Scar you**

“Need it off,” he had said by way of explanation before the blade peeled away the first layer of scar tissue. Hannibal has laid there, affecting a calm he did not feel against the frenzy by which Will worked the knife against his skin.

“Ačiū, my love,” he said tenderly, then winced when the blade dug too deep into the unyielding skin.

“It seems only fair.”

“What does?”

“That you should wear my scars.”

“In place of his?”

“Because of my own.”

“Ačiū,” he repeated softly into the sheets, spotting red and growing wet with his blood.

**Break you**

It took the better part of a year, but he’d known they’d found them the second he’d watched her saunter through the plaza with her cane, the limp nearly unnoticeable to anyone who didn’t know how to look. 

Will had followed along, quietly, cautiously, toeing the line between observation and participation. Now, closing the door and seeing her there, bound in their living room, he felt the tightrope catch and reality come crashing up around him. 

He took in her bruises, and as he walked around her, the puddle of blood, her missing fingers. She didn’t speak - it was too late for words - but hope clung to the creases around her eyes. It was too much, and he felt himself dissociate; he took a metaphorical step back from his body where he regarded himself cooly. 

Hannibal slipped in from the kitchen, covered in blood. He smiled. Will watched his face mimic the same. Hannibal held out the blade, the same small pocket knife he’d pulled and never decided to use. This was a decision, now. He watched himself regard the blade, then lift it, grip it, feel the slight curve of the handle in his palm. He watched himself step forward, further away from his perspective, close enough to feel the terrified heat emanate from her body. 

The coin flipped in the air and this time landed, the clattering noise in his mind snapped him back into himself like a rubber band. He let the blade fall from his hand, its own sharp noise echoing in the wide space.

“Not my promise.” He said to the room, his hands shaking heavily now that they held nothing. She let the weight of her tears spill over her lids, where they smeared across her face. He didn’t look at him before he turned around and left again.

**Lose me**

“Where are you going?” Will placed his bookmark between the crisp pages of his book and shut it silently on his lap.

Hannibal paused as he passed the hearth, the warm red glow flickering behind his shadowed figure. His head tilted and his back straightened, but he turned and walked back to the overstuffed leather chair where Will looked upon him.

“Only dinner,” he replied, leaning down to place a delicate kiss over his brow. It creased in response.

“Alone?” The single word fell heavy between them, the hurt apparent on his face. 

Hannibal set the blade down upon the side table and brushed Will’s tangled curl from out of his eyes. Amber met ocean blue and something familiar simmered. He leaned down and met Will’s lips for a soft kiss. Again. Again. 

He could have them both, he reasoned. But Hannibal knew at the same moment he was choosing. 

“Stay. Enjoy your book.” He let his finger trail over the curve of Will’s lips; Will nuzzled in like one of their dogs. Eyes closed tight, he nodded.

**Hate me**

It got harder, every time. The dreams: more vivid. Reenactments of what they’d become. Hannibal noticed, of course, when he awoke again and again to press himself to Will’s body and whisper reassurances in the dark night. He never brought it up in the mornings. Never left him alone in the bed they’d grown together to share. But when they touched, he knew Hannibal could smell the self-loathing on him like wet fur, pungent and stale.

Perhaps the first time he’d gone out alone, it had been a mercy. But not the second. Not the third. Months later, he had accumulated enough nights alone that he felt justified in mourning the loss of something beautiful he’d been too morally convoluted to let flourish. He’d drank then, because it felt a suitable reaction to not being enough. He’d drank later, too, because he found he couldn’t stop himself. 

**Smash me**

“What you ask is impossible for me.” His voice was quiet, tired of the same conversation in its variations for the past several months. 

“I can’t be what you need me to be,” Will said. His eyes brimming with unshed tears. 

Hannibal sat upon the edge of the bed beside Will and pivoted to take his head in his hands. He looked at him intently, desperate to let the meaning weigh through. This time. “You see? I know you. I see you, Will. You are exactly who you are meant to be.”

Will blinked back the wetness at the corner of his eye. A stray tear escaped, running down and into Hannibal’s soft hand. “What I am is not what you are, Hannibal.” A breath, a pause. “You need to leave.”

Hannibal let his tears fall openly. His lips parted to take in the stale air that followed Will these days, now that he had given up. What he couldn’t convey was how much he cherished it still, no matter how liquor-soaked, no matter how conflicted. They saw each other. But that wasn’t enough. 

Will slapped his hand away, first one and then the other. He held it in his grip; Hannibal let him twist his wrist back to cracking. Anything for his acceptance. Will’s eyes sparkled with an unharnessed rage, an alcohol-fueled loathing that - once turned inward - now spilled out towards everything that he touched. 

“Go!” And again: “Goddammit, leave me!” 

His voice broke on the last syllable and he crumpled into himself upon the bed. Hannibal crawled onto the mattress to wrap himself around the shaking frame. 

**Erase me**

He’d given up demanding it of him and given in to drowning himself with whiskey. Over time, Hannibal had watched him fade. The powerful equal that had joined him on hunts, the mischievous plaything that cornered him in back alleys, even the stubbornly dignified partner that held his own in defense of Alana: it had all sunk below the murky brackish waves of where Will found himself moored now. Now, there was a shell where Will had once stood tall. A hollow, hallowed place. Hannibal would still kneel before him, press his cheek against his thigh and worship before each slurred word, each broken sob. 

Until one morning he was gone.

**Kill me**

The blackness pressed against his eyes was too consuming to be real, not in the city where he’d last been. He tried to blink and felt the scratchy edge of the cloth snag at his lashes. Patiently, he waited. Nearly noiseless, he listened intently to the way Hannibal’s socked feet padded on the expensive ceramic. 

“Let me look at you,” he said quietly, wiping his tongue over the chapped edge of the lip. 

In a moment, the blindfold was swept away. He blinked painfully into the dim light. His hands flexed and folded within his bonds. 

“I can’t let you leave, Will.”

Will swallowed hard, but nodded. “I know.”

“Will you stay?” A hopeful uptick on the last word. He was unused to hearing uncertainty, desperation in Hannibal’s voice.

He was silent for a long time. His throat closed tight with the emotion he knew it wouldn’t be fair to share. Slowly, he shook his head. 

“Okay.”

Tears flowed freely between them then, and Will nodded his assent. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> An exercise long overdue, thank you to @nephila_clavipes for the original idea so many moons ago. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed. Find me on twitter @trikemily
> 
> Ačiū = thank you


End file.
